Profile | By Ruth Okwumbu
From Teenage Entrepreneur to African Business Mogul, the Story of Ashish Thakkar
I
t might not be easy to understand how someone could just be turning 40 years old and already have entrepreneurial experience about two-thirds his age. This is the story of Ashish J Thakkar.
Expectedly, his parents refused to let him. Their question was - What life is there for a teenager who drops out of school going into business? Many negotiations later, they agreed to let him start his own business on the condition that he would return to school if it did not work out. At the Though of Indian descent, the Thakkars age of 15, in 1996, he dropped out of moved to the United Kingdom in 1972 school and used a loan of $5,000 to after Idi Amin enforced the expulsion start his own business. of Asians from Uganda. Ashish was then born 1981, in Leicester city. He He started a small IT shop (which spent some of his childhood at Rushey would later grow to become Mara Mead School as part of Belvoir S form Group), in a shopping mall across group until his parents decided to the street from his father’s shop relocate back to Africa – this time to in Kampala. He began importing Rwanda. computer parts from weekly trips to Dubai, even desktops as well, and Again, they were forced to leave later started offering IT services. Rwanda after two years following the Rwandan Genocide. Older Thakkar The young man was so resolute in his fled with his family to Burundi, dealings, refusing to give in to teenage before settling in Kampala, Uganda distractions that might have come as refugees. At the age of 14, Ashish his way. After recording success in was put in school to continue his IT, Ashish diversified into packaging education. As a student, the young and property development, and man had already been bitten by the later into manufacturing, real estate, entrepreneurial bug. He was selling infrastructure, asset management and computers and computer accessories agriculture. Thakkar later relocated to his friends and teachers in school. the company headquarters to Dubai, From here, he decided that he could while maintaining business operations have a life-long career in business. in Africa.
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In more ways than one, the family’s history of moving from one location to the other appears to have made Ashish into a street-wise and determined hustler, and these things played a role in the success of his business.
In a 2012 interview, Ashish insisted that a strong sense of perseverance and a great dose of positive thinking played a huge role in his achievements. After many years of success, the Mara group has also added financial services, tourism and BPO services to its list of services. Mara Group employs about 11,000 people and has a presence across several African countries. There is also Mara Phones, a part of the Mara Corporation that launched smartphone factories in Africa, which includes AfriOne smartphone factory launched in Nigeria in 2017.
Ashish remains humble in spite of his impressive achievements, as he says that all of it is still a drop in the ocean in the scheme of things. Given the early age at which Thakkar embraced entrepreneurship, it is imperative that he has learnt immense lessons in the journey.
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